Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Should Pots be in Museums?


Image: Bowl, Jinny Whitehead

For the most part, this blog is used to keep members apprised of the travelling exhibition BC-in-a-Box and the APA component Wide Open. However, we are considering having a blog with different questions to get members thinking about issues in contemporary ceramics and to give them a chance to express their point of view. We are hoping you will take the time to log in and leave a comment.If we get interesting comments, we'll report them in the next PGBC Newsletter.

On Friday, September 9th, the North-West Ceramics Foundation sponsored a panel discussion at Emily Carr University on the recently-published book Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries. The book grew out of a very successful exhibition held at the Belkin in 2004 that included some 600 studio pots made by Leach apprentices Glenn Lewis, John Reeve, Michael Henry and Ian Steele as well as by BC ceramists influenced by these apprentices including Charmian Johnson, Gathie Falk, Wayne Ngan and others. Works for the exhibition were selected from collections around BC and Canada, with some literally being taken out of their owners’ dishwashers. Archival photographs, letters and other materials contributed to the understanding and context of the exhibition and the subsequent publication.

An especially interesting and heated discussion arose among the participants regarding whether or not ceramics should be collected by museums. One person expressed the opinion that pottery is kept alive through use, and museums are nothing short of a tomb. Another disagreed, stating that it is in museums and galleries that ceramics become valued additions to the artistic lexicon, and that by collecting ceramics, museums and galleries contribute to the value and context of these works. One potter suggested that ceramics go through different stages of function, beginning with use and then finding a new role to play in being displayed, especially as the work gains provenance, while another thought ceramics could spend more time developing the sort of discourse the art world admires and through which museums justify their collections of art.

What do you think? Should pots be collected by museums or left out to be used by the people who treasure them? If you attended the panel but did not get a chance to express your point of view, or even if you did not, please log on to our BC-in-a-box blog and have your say. We hope to hear from you—if we get some interesting ideas, we’ll print them in the next newsletter.

Thanks to Debra Sloan for her notes on the panel.
For more information on the North-West Ceramics Foundation, please see our website at www.nwcf.ca.

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